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Technology and Society (6) Beyond the Internet: Predicting the Future of Computing Technology  From: RAND In this seminar, leading scientists, professors and technological experts predict possible technological revolutions in the marketplace, consumerism, environmental controls and satellite sensing. According to top researchers, we have already begun creating products and designs that could lead to a world where interconnected "intelligence" is embedded in the objects of our daily lives. Manufacturing Anywhere From: RAND This seminar takes a peek at the industry of tomorrow, exploring the changes that the twenty-first century will bring to manufacturing and discussing how new technologies promise to transform the way that companies do business and help them cater production to the growing global marketplace. Playing the Game: The Economics of the Computer Game Industry From: Cambridge University Press The entertainment industry is one of the largest sectors of the United States economy and fast becoming one of the most prominent globally as well. This seminar, largely focusing on toys and computerized games, will show how microelectronic technology has enabled game designers to conveniently and inexpensively transform plain television screens into playfields of extraordinary capability. Harold L. Vogel, author of the book Entertainment Industry Economics, published by Cambridge University Press, shows how a business evolved in only ten years that at its short-lived peak in 1982 was larger in terms of US domestic retail sales than either the movie or recorded music industries. Reproduction, Genetics and the Rule of Law From: London School of Economics and Political Science In this free seminar, Emily Jackson, senior lecturer in law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, offers a critical and legal analysis of controversial issues around human reproduction, abortion and genetics, with specific reference to UK law. The Business of Biotechnology From: Cambridge University Press This free seminar discusses the "new" biotechnology industry's most spectacular commercial manifestation--"the biotech start-up company". Its authors, William Bains and Sir Christopher Evans, have been involved in initiating a range of successful high-technology companies. In this seminar they offer their experience to discuss the factors contributing to the success and failure of the entrepreneurial biotechnology company. The Past and Future of Rocket Engine Propulsion From: University of Michigan Marking 100 years of powered flight (2003), this seminar focuses on advances in propulsion science, taking us from the entertainment origins of Chinese rocketry, through the early days of Konstantin Ziolkovsky and Robert Goddard and chemical propulsion, and finally through more recent developments in electric propulsion. While chemical propulsion requires large amounts of propellant, which it burns completely over the course of several hours or even minutes, to create greater thrust, electric propulsion demands far less propellant and over weeks, months or even years can surpass chemical propulsion speeds by a factor of 10 or more. Currently more than 100 spacecraft (most are communication satellites) use some form of electric propulsion. The reduction of propellant cost, the potential to reach greater speeds and the ability to more carefully position spacecraft in orbits are just some of the advantages of electric propulsion. | |||||||||||||||
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